One sunny day in June 2022, amid a traffic jam at the bus station, Rajab and Golandam slowly sat on the seats of a taxi with their four children to reach a safe place after 18 years of being chased. But before the car started to move, armed people appeared around the vehicle and ordered Rajab to get off. Golandam fell into a deep panic because she knew that his brothers were chasing her and Rajab like a shadow with the assistance of the Taliban. The armed men, who were soldiers of the 5th district of Taliban police in Kabul city, put a black bag over Rajab’s head. Golandam and her children and Golandam’s old aunt, who was planning to go to Pakistan with them, were put in a military vehicle and taken away.
Rajab and Golandam are a Hazara and a Pashtun couple who got married in 2011 after five years of imprisonment and a struggle in the courts. Rajab is 50 years old, Golandam is 38, and both are originally from the Dolatabad district in Balkh province. They are being harassed and threatened ever since they decided to marry 18 years ago and they spent a part of their lives being on the run. In the Taliban prison, Rajab was forced to renounce the Jafari religion so that the marriage between him and his wife, who is a Sunni, would not be declared invalid.
In 2006, Rajab and Golandam lived in two neighboring villages, called Alang and Dorman Afghania villages, in the Dolatabad district of Balkh province. The residents of Alang village are Hazaras who follow the Shia religion, and the residents of Dorman Afghania are members of the Alizai tribe, who are Pashtuns and follow the Hanafi religion. The families of Rajab and Golandam had close relations with each other since about 50 years ago. Due to the neighboring agricultural lands of the residents of the two villages, the Hazara and Pashtun families in these two villages had close relations.
One afternoon in the summer of 2006, when Golandam returned home from the wedding ceremony of one of the village residents, she noticed some guests talking with her brothers. Golandam tried to know what the guests and her brothers were talking about. One of her brothers said that they were talking to the guests about the agricultural lands and did not allow Golandam to bring tea to the guests and talk to them. In the evening of that day, Golandam was informed that the guests had come to propose to her and that her brothers had engaged her to a man named Arsala.
Arsala, now about 48 years old, was working in Iran at that time to provide for the needs of his low-income family who lived in the village of Afghanyar (the neighboring village of Dorman, Afghania). Arsala was illiterate, from a low-income family, and suffered from mental and nervous illness. This news was inconvenient for Golandam while her brothers had married girls of their choice. She had not seen Arsala up close and did not want to marry him for obvious reasons. When Golandam disagreed with the family members’ decision, her brothers repeatedly beat and tortured her. Once, one of Golandam’s brothers even threatened her with death and said that she would be killed if she did not agree to marry Arsala.
The marks of the brothers’ torture still remain on Golandam’s eyes, face, and right leg. Golandam lost sight in her right eye due to these tortures, and a large scar on her right leg and forehead can still be seen. In the meantime, Golandam was thinking about Rajab, a man who could be the savior of Golandam. Golandam and Rajab were on a cellphone call with each other. Golandam asked Rajab to save her from marrying Arsala or being killed by her brothers. For Golandam, age, religion, and ethnicity differences were unimportant; she thought of one thing “to save herself from a trap her brothers had laid for her.”
In the morning of 2006, Rajab and Golandam escaped from the village and went to Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul. The news of the escape of Rajab and Golandam sounded like a bomb in the village and word quickly spread everywhere.
Rajab and Golandam have been on the run ever since they fled the village until now; 18 years have passed since that day. They would sometimes appear from the prison or from safe houses, or at times from the borders, and sometimes from cities. The couple had four children during these years of escape. Rajab and Golandam are now in Iran after spending nine months in the Taliban prison. They shared the story of their 18 years of painful life with the correspondent of Independent Persian.
“You Are A Hazara, How Did You Dare Marry an Oghan (Pashtun) Woman?”
Rajab says that when he was arrested on Friday, 13 June 2022, at the passenger car station of Kabul Company, the Taliban took him, Golandam, Golandam’s aunt, and their children to a nearby military base. Rajab and Golandam lived in secret with the Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan for fear of falling into the hands of Golandam’s brothers. They planned to go to Pakistan from Kabul but were arrested before the car left. Rajab said: “When the Taliban caught me and started beating me, I said, “What sin have I committed? One member of the Taliban said: “You are a Hazara!” How did you dare to marry an Oghan (Pashtun) woman?”.
Rajab explains that in the Taliban base, they hung him by his feet in a container and took turns torturing him. An hour later, Rajab, Golandam, Golandam’s aunt, and the children were taken to the building of the fifth security district of the Taliban. Golandam, her aunt, and her children were locked in an abandoned warehouse, and Rajab was tortured in another room. Rajab says about the torture in the fifth police station of the Taliban in Kabul: “They connected an electric shock to my body. They would put a water hose in my mouth until my stomach was full of water, then someone would kick me in the stomach. Each member of the Taliban took turns hitting me with a cable and cursing me.” Golandam and her children Nargis, ten years old; Maryam, eleven years old; Leila, nine years old and Abbas, four years old, heard their father’s screams under the Taliban torture.
In the meantime, Arsala and Golandam brothers arrived in Kabul from the Dolatabad district. They were trying to take Rajab, Golandam, and their children to the village and settle accounts with them there. Golandam’s brothers were happy that they could recapture the couple, who were acquitted by the court in the previous government of Afghanistan and married according to the court’s ruling, with the help of the Taliban. Golandam says that before arriving in Kabul, her brothers called her aunt, who was in prison, with her and said that Golandam and Rajab would be killed. Still, they have nothing to do with the aunt.
Golandam could hear the voices of the Taliban from behind the door, talking about shooting and killing Rajab. But this decision was not based on the verdict of the courts and judicial institutions of the Taliban, but on the instigation of Golandam’s brothers, who told the Taliban soldiers: “Commander Rajab” ran away their sister during the rule of the previous government and their children are the result of an illegitimate relationship outside of marriage. Rajab and Golandam heard many times from Taliban members that they were told that their children are bastards because the marriage of a Shia man with a Sunni woman is Haram and forbidden. For this reason, the Taliban also harassed Golandam’s children by calling them impure.
Golandam says that while they were imprisoned in the 5th district of the Taliban police in Kabul, the Taliban even refused to give them water. Once, her four-year-old son, Abbas, called loudly for his father, who was being tortured in another room. But a Taliban member punched him in his mouth, filling the child’s mouth with blood. Golandam said: “I kissed the Taliban’s feet many times. I begged them and said not to do this; my children are afraid. But the Taliban said that your children are the result of adultery and are bastards.”
During the 20 months of rule over Afghanistan, the Taliban have repeatedly prevented Shiite men from marrying Sunni women. In the Shia religion, the marriage of a Shia man to a Sunni woman is considered permissible. Still, there are different views regarding the marriage of a Shia woman to a Sunni man. Some Shia jurists, such as Fazel Lankarani, have said about the marriage of a Shia woman to a Sunni man that “it is better to avoid this.” Still, some, such as Sayed Ali Khamenei, believe: “If there is no fear of deviation from religion, there is no obstacle.”
Taliban’s Ministry of Propagation Virtue and Prevention of Vice has not yet issued a written ruling regarding the prohibition of marriage between followers of two religions. However, the officials of this ministry have repeatedly talked about the ban on marriage between the followers of two religions.
In January 2023, the Talibani officials of the Ministry of Propagation Virtue and Prevention of Vice announced to the people in the mosques of Mazar-e-Sharif that marriage between followers of the Shiite and Hanafi religions is Haram (forbidden). On the 15th of the same month, the governor of the Taliban in the Naasi district of Badakhshan province wrote in a letter he sent to the mosques: “According to religious and ideological considerations, it is announced to all ethnic groups under the territory of this district. From now on, no one from the Sunni religion has the right to give a girl to a Shia or take a wife from a Shia for a Sunni.”
Click here to read part two of the article.
Endnotes:
- https://www.hrw.org/report/2012/03/28/i-had-run-away/imprisonment-women-and-girls-moral-crimes-afghanistan
- http://www.indiandefencereview.com/the-darkness-of-talibans-sharia/
- https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/q4kJMW5Z
This story was written by Mukhtar Vafaei and translated by Asadullah Jafari “Pezhman”.
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